The Role of Compliance Programs in Italian Counter-Corruption Policies

This paper offers a general overview on the Italian legislation regulating compliance programs. Even though the main relevant piece of legislation was adopted early, in 2001, after fifteen years its importance is becoming more and more patent. Although normative rules about compliance programs represent just a part of the Italian countercorruption policies, the structure provided under the 2001 Act (legislative decree no. 231), was extended also to public bodies and agencies that are not subject to that very same Act. Compliance programs were introduced beside the “quasi-criminal” liability of companies for their employees’ misconduct. The existence and the respect of a proper compliance program is the only viable defence for a company, if for example an act of bribery is perpetrated by an employee. What makes the Italian compliance programs regulation worth presentation is the particular relationship between corporations’ organizational duties, quasi-criminal liability and the Constitutional ban of any prosecutorial discretion (art. 112 It. Cost.). The outcomes of such synergy turn out to be peculiar, especially if compared to other realities, like the US federal one.